how fast new media is changing our world?
Michael Hyatt has transcribed the stats from the video. You can read them by clicking here.
The rapid adoption of Gutenberg’s printing press resulted in the propagation of books and newspapers, which subsequently became the mediums of choice to spread information. Such mediums, along with more recent ones, like radio,television and the telephone, are now considered old media.
The times are always changing and so are the ways in which we communicate. The continuous advances in information technologies are facilitating the exchange of ideas and information and changing our content consumption habits. Such innovations are simultaneously threatening old media’s relevance and business models.
Just a week ago music publishers, who are reluctant to adapt to new changes in the marketplace, went against the iTunes store looking to collect fees for providing 30-second song samples (read more here). An act that comes up as greedy, since song samples are supposed to provide a preview to users, so they can make informed purchase decisions.
The newspaper industry is also going through difficult times, specially after the current downturn in the economy, mostly because they are competing against online websites for readers and advertisers. Most newspapers are offering digital versions of their content online in an effort to maintain their market share, but this doesn’t necessarily guaranteed good results, as noted in an article by Stephanie Clifford from The New York Times. Previous advertisers are not necessarily keeping their business with newspaper’s online editions.
Changes are also taking place in the book industry, specially after Google took the task to digitalize a massive amount of books and make them available. According to some critics this would violate copyrights. Digitalized books are now being offered as ebooks and audiobooks, such changes in the marketplace are raising new issues, such as ownership. Recently Amazon deleted purchased books from many customers’ Kindles.
Old media is converging with new media and during the process I’m sure the clashes will continue, some business models will die and others will flourish giving birth to new industries.
I enjoy watching TED talks and this presentation by Evgeny Morozov is one of the reasons why. He argues that new media may actually reinforce authoritarian regimes by the use of political operatives to spread disinformation.
My research project will be on the role of new media in the financial markets, specifically, how twitter and blogging are becoming part of the decision making process for traders and investors.
I will focus on how traders and investors are influenced by these new technologies and how new media can be used with other technologies and processes, such as data mining, in developing trading strategies.
Something that I find interesting is how people base their actions on others, and I believe this herd mentality is harmful in trading. So, I expect to cover the psychological impact of new media as well.
The ever increasing computing power and the explosion of the information age have significantly changed the way information is produced, distributed and consumed. New media is an expression of such technological progress in a free society. In essence new media is the democratization of content. Ideas are no longer tied to the status quo, since everyone can create content and easily communicate their opinions.
The internet has undergone a paradigm shift. Just a few years ago content was created by a relatively small number of publishers and directed to a huge number of readers. In the web 1.0 era, the standard practice was to deliver content to a passive audience. The new web – what many call the web 2.0 – has become a participative platform where content is generated by the users. The focus is now in creating social experiences with the incorporation of blogs, wikis, social networks and many other tools.
Like every revolution, clashes are due to occur. Such is the case of the Associated Press (AP) versus bloggers. In the summer of 2008 the AP wanted to charge fees on quoted text and the result was a PR fiasco after the blogosphere found AP claim to be ridiculous (more here).
Old media, in order to survive, has to embrace change and converge with new media. A good example of this is how many old media networks are leveraging the power of the web to promote their content as noted in Laura Holson’s article in the NYT. Many of their TV shows are posted online few hours after they have been broadcasted on TV. Another successful example is Hulu.com, which is a joint venture between NBC and FOX, and has a great collection of TV shows available to watch at any time.
Also fueling new media is the proliferation of handheld devices and improvements in the wireless networking infrastructure, both of which are making the consumption of media ubiquitous. An example of this is the iPhone, which has available applications that stream live video.
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